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Hebrew Poetry: Idiosyncratic Resources, Part 2

“What does it mean to be authentic?” asked a younger Israeli poet of Iraqi heritage, Almog Behar:

To write poems about Erez Bitton
And hope that one day I’ll run down Dizengoff, shoutingAna min Baghdad, ana min Baghdad
[I am from Baghdad, I am from Baghdad]
— “Homer of Lod: The Indespensibility of Erez Bitton,”
Matti Friedman, Jewish Review of Books Spring 2017

What do you mean to be authentic?
To run along Dizengoff Street, shouing:
“Ana min al-Maghrib. Ana min al-Maghrib.”
[“I am from the Atlas Mountains”]
— Erez Biton. “Summary of a Conversation” (2009)
IN You Who Crossed My Path (2015 Hebrew-English collection)

Poet Erez Biton (also spelled: Bitton), won The Israel Prize in Literature in 2015. He was the first Mizrachi winner in the history of the prize, which was first awarded in 1953.

In 2016, Biton headed a committee that produced a number of recommendations for increasing content about Mizrachi Jews in Israeli school curricula (NIF story; Ynet story). Recommendations include teaching the poetry of Keissar, Roy Hasan, and others.

“Hebrew Poetry: Idiosyncratic Resources,” posted in January 2019, included some notes on Medieval Hebrew and Africana poetry as well as a link to a set of resource pages. Since then, that Poetry Resources page has been expanded and now includes Mizrachi poets Shimon Adaf, Maya Bejerano, and Ronny Someck, as well as those mentioned/linked above. Some of the resources cited are in print, but many are also available on-line and free-of-charge.